Author

Date of Graduation

Document Type

Degree Name

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Electrical Engineering

Advisor

Roy A. McCann

Committee Member

Juan C. Balda

Second Committee Member

Larry J. Roe

Keywords

FACTS, Power Systems, Reactive Power Consumption

Abstract

The world revolves around energy and the energy sector is continually transforming and evolving. The status quo has been set by governing agencies in the United States for completely reliable power. The demand for energy efficiency continually rises for multiple reasons. Technology has improved for all sectors of the power grid, including renewable energy sources, fault protection, and SMART grid technology. The addition of new energy sources has led to the decommissioning of inefficient energy sources. The implementation of new technologies and power load on a large scale, coupled with the removal of grid stabilizers has posed different challenges that have been overcome using Flexible AC Transmission System devices or FACTS. FACTS devices increase power quality, reliability and efficiency of a power grid, if implemented correctly. With several different FACTS devices, the many power grid situations and FACTS combinations must be methodically tested and planned. ETAP and MATLAB/SIMULINK simulate designed power systems accurately with the additional functionality to model FACTS. The simulation of the IEEE nine bus model with potentially problematic variations applied show that FACTS components are required. The simulation show that the power factor and energy efficiency increased with FACTS. The avoidance of blackouts with fault recovery was made plausible, with less overshoot and quicker convergence time. Finally, combining FACTS can increase the revitalization of the power grid through the replacement of polluting generation to renewable generation.